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On the original Star Trek, Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott, a.k.a. “Scotty,” was a curious character and one of his traits was his proclivity for under-promising and then over-performing. This usually manifested in a crisis situation when Captain Kirk needed warp speed, and something was wrong with the warp drive or the dilithium crystals. Kirk would ask when the warp drive could be back on line and Scotty would provide a seemingly long time (under-promise) and then get it done in half the time or sooner (over-perform).

Elon Musk just might have a little “Scotty” in him as our Tesla Model 3 Long Range was promoted as getting 310 miles per fully-charged battery yet we were getting about 350 miles. Elon Musk tweeted that the Model 3 Long Range has a 75-kW battery. To calculate, one takes the battery size (75,000) and divides by the watts-per-mile (213 when we hit 6,000 miles). So, the average range of our road trip was 352.1 miles—far greater than the promised 310.